Kate’s lids bobbed, eyes still wet and blazing with a heat already extinguished from the rest of her, even as her face appeared ice-bound, giving nothing away. Elin brushed her sister’s wrist bone, the back of her hand white and cold and smooth as marble, and it was then that Elin understood what was ravaging Kate’s body. Not the name, but where it came from, and the fact that it ran through her sister’s blood, and if Kate’s blood, then her own, too. The air bristled with cruelty. Her father’s arms, too weak to be trusted, her mother’s rising panic as he swung Kate one last time in the autumn
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